His First Choice
by Story Please
Summary: Molly is tired of being unloved and passed over. She wants a special someone but she wants to be his first choice, not the good-enough girl to pass the time with until someone of value is finally free to pursue. But when she literally runs into her partner from Care of Magical Creatures class on her way back from Hogsmeade, will she finally find exactly what she is looking for?


Author's Note:

Event: St. Chocolate's Day for The Golden Snitch Forum

School: Ilvermorny

House: Horned Serpent

Prompt: Arthur/Molly Honmei-Choco- write about one half of the pairing giving a Valentines gift to their partner.

Word Count: 2,211

* * *

 **His First Choice**

Molly Prewett was in a funk. There just was no other way to put it. No matter what charms she tried, her face would always be round and her freckles were far too plentiful and her hair was as orange as a carrot. She wasn't much to look at, unlike her older twin brothers, who were popular with the girls despite being huge tricksters. Her eyes were a dull brown colour, and while she had an ample bosom for a seventeen year old girl, she also had an ample waist to match.

"Aren't you excited about Valentine's Day?" One of the girls in her year tittered to another girl who nodded.

Molly rolled her eyes. Both of her best friends had someone to snog in the alcoves with but she had no one. Her face blazed with the memory of her humiliation when she'd tried asking out Milton Fudge, who wasn't all that attractive anyway, and been soundly rejected in front of absolutely everyone.

Sure, there were boys who wanted to kiss her and paw at her, but only in secret. She was tired of being the consolation prize. She was tired of being seen as "good enough" until the one that they truly liked came along. It was enough to make her tear up to think of how many times she'd thought she'd found someone who liked her back only to find that they'd only used her to get close to one of her far more attractive friends.

Molly tried not to let it get to her. She tried not to be jealous of her friends and their seemingly effortless way of making boys like them.

But the miserable truth was that she was hopelessly jealous, indeed.

If that wasn't bad enough she'd overheard the boys' secret name for her. Molly Piglet. As in, "Molly Piglet might be fat as a sow and twice as ugly, but she's a good kisser as long as you close your eyes and it's dark."

She wasn't sure what was more embarrassing.

"Bugger Valentine's Day," she said. "Phooey on cupid and all of his nasty arrow-slinging babies!"

The other girls stared at her.

"Surely you don't mean that!" said Veronica Lupin, who'd been her friend since second year Care of Magical Creatures class.

"Valentine's Day has never done me any favors," Molly replied with a sniff. "I don't see why _I_ should do any for it."

"Surely you have a secret admirer or two," said Catherine O'Leary, from where she sat on her bed reading a trashy wizarding romance novel. "With those... _assets_...I imagine you'd be quite popular with the boys."

Molly looked down at her large chest and wrinkled her nose as though she'd smelled something bad. "I am not a _cow_!" she said angrily. "Is it too much to ask to be valued for who I am, not these overgrown _assets_?"

"Boys our age are stupid anyway," Lisa Neary said, placing a sympathetic hand on Molly's shoulder. "It's not like they'll be doing much more than going to the local sweets shop and choosing whatever has been placed in the Valentine's display."

Molly laughed ruefully at that, and quite enjoyed the next half hour, which was dedicated to bashing all the immature boys at Hogwarts and their utter lack of class.

"Now the boys at Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, I hear they have class," said Catherine with a wistful sigh.

"You're reading too many romance novels, I think," Lisa replied with a snort. "All boys are idiots."

For the next few days, Molly felt a bit better, but then she found out that most of her friends had gotten a date for the Valentine's dance that had been scheduled in a week's time. She spent their next Hogsmeade weekend in a funk as they all tried on dresses, each finding something absolutely beautiful to wear. Molly, on the other hand, had to special order one in a much larger size in order for it to fit her widest measurements for tailoring. In the end, she went with something a lot less revealing (and marginally more comfortable) in a royal scarlet colour.

Unlike her friends, Molly had to go back to the dress robes shop for alterations due to her unusual measurements,, so she had to get special approval from McGonagall to do so. Of course, she was so busy trying to keep the massive wrapped bundle from slipping from her arms that she collided with another person as she turned the corner.

"Oof!" cried a very male-sounding voice, and Molly briefly saw a flash of red hair before she was falling forward onto someone.

"Gideon, if that's you—" she growled.

Molly's twin brothers were known pranksters. If one of them had pretended to "bump into her" just to make her drop her nice dance robes in an act of brotherly protectiveness, Molly was fairly certain that she was going to hex their bits off.

"Sorry, who?" came a muffled voice from under her.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, growing scarlet-faced as she realized that the voice was somewhat unfamiliar. She hastily pulled herself off of him, and offered her hand. "Let me help you up!"

There, on the ground, with a very confused look on his face, was Arthur Weasley. They shared a few classes and were actually partnered in Care of Magical creatures for their senior project on centaur cultural events. He was a little eccentric, especially when it came to Muggle Studies (for he was the only seventh year still taking the class), but a good-hearted person who Molly generally liked spending time with.

"In a bit of a hurry there, are you?" he asked, wincing as he rubbed a sore spot on his forehead. "I didn't realize there'd be any other students out here."

"Neither did I," Molly admitted. "And yes, Professor McGonagall gave me special permission. My dress robes had to be specially ordered."

"Ah," he said with a smile, "Well, if they were specially ordered, I would bet they must look amazing, seeing as they haven't been pawed at by anyone else."

Molly found herself considering his words. She'd been so full of self consciousness and a bit of humiliated at having a stockier shape than any of her friends that she hadn't realized that the style and cut she had chosen was likely to be the only one of its kind at the dance. She smiled back, feeling rather better about herself than she'd felt only a few minutes earlier.

"So," she said, "what are you in Hogsmeade for?"

"Ah...it's a bit of a secret, you see," Arthur said, looking somewhat flustered.

"Oh! Are you getting a gift for someone you like?" Molly asked, feeling a bit noisier than she knew was polite. Still, she couldn't help it. Bookish but friendly Arthur Weasley had never been much for parties and dating casually. She wasn't even sure he'd ever had a proper snog.

"Um, well, to be fair, I'm not sure she's going to like it much, now," he said, looking sadly at the ground. There, beside him lay a rather dented box wrapped in colourful heart-print paper with a Honeydukes foil sticker. "That was the last of my Christmas money, too."

"Oh, but their chocolate is to die for!" Molly said, trying to cheer him up, trying not to think back to the rude things that she and her friends had said about Honeydukes chocolate displays. She shifted her dress package onto one arm, then bent down and picked up the box with her free hand. "And I'm sure you could flatten out that dent!"

"Thanks for that, Molly," he said softly as he took it from her.

"Say, why don't we walk back together?" Molly asked. "I mean, that is, if you are finished with your duties."

"Sure, I mean, yeah, I mean, of course, I'd like nothing better!" Arthur placed the box carefully under one arm and they began to walk back towards the castle together.

"So, this girl you like," Molly said, her curiosity still burning, "have you asked her to the dance?"

"No," Arthur said, growing pink around his collar. "I-er-haven't had the chance."

"Well, when are you planning on giving her the chocolate, then?" Molly asked. "Maybe you can ask her then."

"I don't know," he replied dubiously. "Who would want to go out with someone like me? I've got secondhand dress robes and a dented box of chocolates. It's shabby any way you look at it. She'd be embarrassed to be seen with me and rightly so."

Molly's heart went out to Arthur. She knew that his family wasn't particularly well-off, but she also knew that shabby robes meant quite a lot less than attitude.

"I'm sure she'd be happy to be seen with you, Arthur Weasley," she chided him goodnaturedly. "And anyway, anyone who would judge you based on your clothing or your bank account and not your character is just a superficial gold digger and you're better off without them anyway!"

"Oh, what am I doing?" he muttered, more to himself than to her, then he turned to look at her with a mopey look on his face. "If anything, even if I tell her and she accepts my invitation to the dance, there are ten times the blokes who could show her a better time, provide better for her, and be quite a lot easier on the eyes."

"You don't want her to settle for you," Molly whispered back, feeling the sting of unshed tears in the back of her throat. She knew this feeling intimately well, after all. How many times had a boy shown interest in her only to choose one of her friends once he had the chance?

"Just look at me," he continued, a rueful crack in his voice, "I adore silly Muggle things and I'm usually broke, and I am hopelessly clumsy and constantly running into innocent schoolgirls."

"I hardly think that one time qualifies as _constantly_ ," Molly replied, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. "My cousin Marsha is so clumsy that once she slipped and her foot somehow got stuck in the Christmas goose!"

Arthur let out a bark of laughter at that.

"See?" Molly said, patting his shoulder, "There, now. Much better, hmm?"

He smiled at her, his cheeks rosy, and Molly was struck by how his jaw had begun to lengthen, a smattering of stubble lining it in a way that made him look more like a man than a boy.

By this time, they had nearly reached the gate. As they went through, Arthur cleared his throat.

"Molly?"

"Yes?" She shifted the weight of the package to her other arm and turned to look back at him.

"I wasn't completely truthful with you before," he said slowly, staring at the ground.

Molly suddenly felt as though the ground had lurched under her feet and her stomach flopped uncomfortably. "Oh?" she said, her voice tight.

"Molly...these chocolates…" he stroked the dented portion idly, then held them out. "They're for you."

She stared at him in shock for a long moment, her brain trying to process the implication of his words.

"The shocked silence is _very_ reassuring," he deadpanned as she hesitantly took the box with her free hand. "In any case, this doesn't mean that you have to go to the dance with me or anything. So yeah. I guess I'd better go before I make this even more awkward than it already is."

He turned and began to walk towards the castle alone, his face scarlet with shame and embarrassment.

"Yes!" she shouted, grasping at the box tightly until it crumpled a bit more than it had been already

"What?" he turned, his blue eyes intent on her.

"I said _yes_!" Molly replied. "I would love to go to the dance with you."

"Oh will you?" Arthur said, breaking into a wide grin that made butterflies beat in Molly's belly. "It's not an imposition, I hope."

"None at all, Arthur," Molly said, grinning at him. "In fact, I believe that you deserve a present as well."

"Wha-mmmf!" Arthur's eyes flew wide as Molly leapt forward and kissed him soundly on the lips.

"Just to show you that I'm not settling," Molly said as she pulled away. She winked and gave him a devilish grin. "But the same goes for you. I do have twin brothers. They'll make your life hell if you break my heart."

"I'd never dream of it," Arthur swore. "If I did, though, I'm sure I'd deserve whatever infernal torture you could come up with."

"I like you, Arthur Weasley," Molly said, and with a surge of excitement, she realized that this was most certainly true. In her heart of hearts she hadn't allowed herself to imagine it, but now that it was in front of her face, everything seemed so clear.

"Oh, I fear that I am way past liking when it comes to you Molly Prewett," Arthur said, stepping closer to her and tipping her chin up to look at him.

His first kiss was sweet. His second was needful. But his third kiss was divine, and Molly knew then that she would give him her heart without reservation.


End file.
